Firstly: an honest "thank you" to you, for actually having a discussion instead of a flame fest. There is actual thought here, and an interest in engaging in a hard discussion in a level-headed way, and I'm so appreciative for that, that I'd put you on my Christmas list if I knew who you were.

Sincerely, I thank you.

On to the matter at hand.

"To issue in short is that responsibility isn't the only thing up for grabs; there's a lot of other factors considered by the other quotes that are pretty straight forward and mostly that's culpability."

Of interest, to me, is the fact that when one Google's the definition of "culpability", the very first word of the very first definition of the very first result is "responsibility". Don't take my word for it: https://www.google.com/search?q=culpability&oq=culpabili...

I bring this up because you mentioned semantic land-mines, and I argue that this is one such thing. Responsibility, culpability, blame: really, we're dancing around synonyms at this point, and it plays into the hands of my zero-sum thing almost too conveniently.

To continue (into the foray of how I believe you are seeing the game as zero-sum -- if we can actually comfortably define this as a "game" behind the shielded apathy of our clickey typing aids): you ask where the link is, and then, in the next sentence, show me the link directly:

"Case A: A woman drinking, she is more responsible for the rape. Case B: A man drinking, he is less responsible for the rape. /n/n Where's the link?"

The link is right there, in the words "more" and "less". In a non-zero-sum game, neither party gets to BE "more" or "less" responsible, because that implies a static relationship: that the MORE responsible one is, the LESS responsible another is! That implies, if not outright states, the shifting of blame as I described it in case 1 above, instead of unlimited parties sharing an inexhaustible pool of responsibility (or culpability, or blame, or whatever word is sufficient).

Were it truly a conversation in a non-zero-sum system, it would be completely rephrased, because it would HAVE to be. Because in a non-zero-sum game, it simply does not make logical, mathematical sense to use words like "more" and "less". It would be something like "this man is completely responsible for the crime, yet it cannot also be said that the victim did not have a hand in her own undoing".

AND vs. OR.

The difference might seem subtle, and an issue of hair-splitting... at least, on the surface. But really, it changes the entire thing. It permeates even into your final conjecture: "In case A person A is 100% responsible and person B 0% responsible, but in case B you could see it as they are both 50% responsible for the act or they are both 100% responsible for the act as either of them acting would have been sufficient for the event?"

Well, that depends mightily on a number of things, but what's worrying is that according to your example, there still seems to be a finite amount of responsibility/culpability/blame to go around. At worst, there is 100% blame that each person could have -- 200% total. At best, there is only 100% shared among each participant. Either way, there is a set amount, and it is exactly this that I protest against as a false understanding of the premise. To my mind, person A -- the "pusher" in each case -- would likely be assigned 100%. Person B? Unless he actively exerted some effort to put an end to the catastrophe, they would carry SOME blame, even and especially if he did nothing. Could have stopped it, but didn't? Yeah, there is culpability there. Helped a little? More culpability.

But at the risk of turning this into a novella: I see what tree you're sniffing at the base of, and would like to bark up it for a hot minute.

It's about empathy.

Responsibility is one thing, but empathy is the added factor in the discussion. I say "added" because it adds to the conversation a much-needed dimension that is often ignored. If one commits a crime that others can empathize with -- especially if the others are jury members or a judge -- the severity of the crime gets reduced and/or the sentence gets lightened. Note, that in this case, the crime still exists as such, and no one questions whether or not the perp is responsible for committing it; its just that if you can get a jury or judge to empathize with the reasons it was committed, the results of the trial -- and the severity of the sentence -- change.

"Stealing bread to feed your family because you seemed to have no other choice" is the most facile example I can think of. Is stealing wrong? Yes. Is the person who stole a criminal? Yes. No one doubts either thing. Yet, given the circumstances, I doubt you'd find a judge or jury who'd really bring down the full force and backing of the law to punish such a thing.

AND vs. OR.

Guilty? Yes. Criminal act? Yes. AND, were there reasons some of us could relate to?

If the answer is "yes," things go down differently.

Does this facile and woefully inadequate analogy apply? To rape??

I think the answer is -- truly -- "sometimes".

Can she hold her liquor to the point where she's about to fall down but doesn't slur her words? Does she, under those conditions, flirt and make out with people she normally wouldn't (were she of sober mind and body)? Was she, during that night, wearing unusually revealing clothing and hitting on people she would not were she sober? Did her "no" -- if she was even capable of uttering one, at that point -- come off as a demure come-on, after which she almost enthusiastically went along with the act?

And him: was he drunk and horny enough to not see what might be exceptionally subtle cues of protest, followed by compliance that would be perceived as "willing" by even sober men?

These paragraphs are, by no means, intended to paint every -- or even a majority -- of rapes in a way that would suggest that most, if not all, rapes are really just rebranded regret. Instead, they are intended to outline the complexity -- the color version, as opposed to black-and-white version -- of the entire situation, in a way that is more true to how things might have gone down; and how I know a vast amount of these things go down, and how an overwhelming amount of such situations are eventually perceived and understood by both the participants and the people attempting to decide the fate of all involved.

It's a sticky situation, even before you bring into play the obvious hypocrisy involved regarding drunk people in the USA -- that being, how everyone is conditioned to assume that drunkards are utterly and ultimately responsible for every horrible act they perpetrate, even upon themselves, UNLESS we're talking about rape and consent, at which point everything that ever happens is someone else's bad.

The TL;DR is, I guess, that this topic is so much more complicated than a zero-sum view of responsibility can present that I am held breathless and in awe -- in an unmistakably negative way -- at the number of people who view it that way.

It simply does not do. Which is why I find myself, a bleeding-heart liberal and proud progressive, with a wife who is a former sex worker and sex educator, at odds with the principles of the current social justice movements in place by the unanimously younger crowd I interface with these days.